“We’re not at the bottom of the cycle and it’s certainly not a ‘V,’” said Luciano L. Prida Jr., president of Prida Guida & Co. PA. Clients are making plans to move in the right direction. “Some I thought were maybe on their last legs seem to have found some balance, including some old line businesses you wouldn’t expect like printing.”

People have a lot of capital they want to deploy and they are trying to do that in stuff that interests them, said Curt P. Creely, partner, transactional and securities at Foley & Lardner LLP in Tampa.

“You see all sorts of ad hoc investment partnerships or special purposes entities being put together in club investments in a bunch of different things.”

Valuation Research Corp. is mainly involved on the merger and acquisition side but over the last couple of years, has seen “a pretty slow market,” said Steven E. Schuetz, managing director at the Tampa office of the Milwaukee-based firm.

It’s a different story for Julio C. Ramirez Jr., senior vice president and commercial middle market team leader at Fifth Third Bank. His M&A deal activity is up.

“We’re primarily dealing with only privately-held companies that have sat around on some liquidity for a couple of years and now are making very strategic additions to diversify either a product type or geography they serve,” he said.

TAKING IT IN is a weekly column by TBBJ Editor Alexis Muellner focused on behind-the-scenes insights about the newspaper and its stories or interactions.

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